1 All coroner certified deaths registered after 1 January 2007 are now subject to the Causes of Death (COD) revisions process. See Technical Note 2: Causes of Death - Revisions Process. Revisions were first applied to the 2007 reference year. Prior to the implementation of the revisions process, cause of death statistics were not revised after publication. This was the case even if a coronial enquiry was later finalised.

2 The 2007 revisions process was limited to all cases which moved from open to closed during the 12 months following preliminary coding. Processing for preliminary and revised data for the future will investigate all cases, open and closed Technical Note 1: 2008 COD Collection - Process Improvements.

3 The 2007 revisions process only impacted on coroner certified deaths. 2007 (revised) data has been published in this release on a reference year basis. In 2011, after a second application of the COD revisions process, 2007 (final) data will be released in the 2009 Causes of Death publication.

RESULTS OF THE 2007 REVISIONS PROCESS

4 During the 2007 revisions period, 1,614 coronial cases moved from open to closed, and 1,172 coroner certified records were recoded to a potentially more specific underlying cause of death.

5 Table 1 shows the impact of the revisions on the 2007 coroner certified data at ICD-10 chapter level. Overall, the 2007 revisions process resulted in 476 records changing from Ill-defined causes (R00-R99). This was a 38% reduction in causes of death recorded in the Ill-defined causes (R00-R99) category.

6 Of the records that moved from Ill-defined (R00-R99) to more specific codes, 192 moved to Diseases of the circulatory system (I00-I99), 43 to Intentional self-harm [Suicide] (X60-X84, Y87.0) and 76 to Other external causes of accidental injury (W00-X59). Of the 273 records which moved from Undetermined intent (Y10-Y34, Y87.2), 123 moved to Suicide (X60-X84, X87.0) and 85 to Transport accidents (V01-V99, Y85).

7 All chapters with the exception of Diseases of the eye and adnexa (H00-H59) and Diseases of the ear and mastoid process (H60-H95), (and Ill defined causes (R00-R99)) increased in number as a result of COD Revisions.

Diseases of the eye and adnexa and Diseases of the ear and mastoid process (H00-H95)

4

2

-2

-50.0

Diseases of the heart and blood vessels (I00-I99)

6 053

6 248

195

3.2

Diseases of the respiratory system (J00-J99)

637

656

19

3.0

Diseases of the digestive system (K00-K93)

589

619

30

5.1

Diseases of the skin and subcutaneous tissue (L00-L99)

13

14

1

7.7

Diseases of the muscles, bones and tendons (M00-M99)

58

59

1

1.7

Diseases of the kidney, urinary system and genitals (N00-N99)

89

92

3

3.4

Pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium (O00-O99)

5

6

1

20.0

Conditions originating in the perinatal period (P00-P96)

37

39

2

5.4

Congenital and chromosomal abnormalities (Q00-Q99)

73

81

8

11.0

Ill defined causes (R00-R99)

1 264

788

-476

-37.7

External causes (V01-Y98)

6 444

6 617

173

2.7

All Causes

16 851

16 851

-

-

- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)

(a) 2007 data are revised and subject to a further revisions process. See Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions for further information.

(b) Data cells with small values have been randomly assigned to protect the confidentiality of individuals. As a result, some totals will not equal to the sum of their components.

8 Table 2 shows the impact of the COD revisions process on the 2007 data for selected causes. The largest movements were:

the number of records coded to Suicides (X60-X84, Y87.0) increased by 173

the number of records coded to Transport accidents (V01-V99, Y85) increased by 116

the number of records coded to Accidental poisonings (X40-X49) increased by 70

the number of records coded to Falls (W00-W19) increased by 33

the number of records coded to Assaults (X85-Y09, Y87.1) increased by 30.

9 The greatest movement among External cause codes due to the revisions process was the increase in the number of deaths coded to Suicide from 1,881 (2007 preliminary) to 2,054 (2007 revised), an increase of 173 deaths (9.2%).

(a) 2007 data are revised and subject to a further revisions process. See Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions for further information.

(b) Care needs to be taken in interpreting figures relating to suicide due to limitations of data, see Explanatory Notes 72-75.

10 Table 3 shows the movement between selected causes from 2007 (preliminary) underlying cause of death to 2007 (revised) underlying cause of death. The largest movements were between Other ill-defined and unspecified causes of mortality (R99), Diseases of the circulatory system (I00-I99); and Undetermined intent (Y10-Y34, Y87.2) and Suicide (X60-X84, Y87.0). Table 3 also highlights the movements in codes within chapters for these selected causes.

(a) 2007 data are revised and subject to a further revisions process. See Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions for further information

(b) Data cells with small values have been randomly assigned to protect the confidentiality of individuals. As a result, some totals will not equal to the sum of their components. Cells with a zero value have not been affected by confidentialisation.

(c) Includes all causes of death.

(d) Care needs to be taken in interpreting figures relating to suicide due to limitations of data, see Explanatory Notes 72-75.

IMPACT OF THE REVISIONS PROCESS ON EXTERNAL CAUSES OF DEATH DATA

11 The revisions process applied to 2007 (preliminary) data has increased the number of deaths coded to Suicide by 173. See tables 2, 3 and 5 in this Technical Note for further information relating to the impact of the revisions process on Suicide deaths.

12 Table 4 presents data on 2007 open coroner cases (preliminary and revised) with an external cause of death by mechanism of death. This is presented to provide information on the impact of the revisions process on these data.

Table 4 - Open coroner cases, External causes of death by mechanism - 2007 Preliminary and Revised, (a)(b): State and territory of registration(c)

Hanging

Falls

Poisoning

Drowning

Transport Accidents

Firearms

Sharp Objects

Other and Unspecified

Total

Preliminary 2007

NSW

88

27

92

41

54

22

6

185

515

Vic

60

40

74

11

68

14

15

168

450

Qld

179

19

88

31

143

47

21

262

790

SA

21

10

26

4

29

9

5

26

130

WA

25

8

29

7

94

3

5

31

202

Tas

3

3

8

-

9

2

1

9

35

NT

7

4

4

1

29

3

3

11

62

ACT

1

1

1

1

1

-

1

4

10

Aust

384

112

322

96

427

100

57

696

2 194

Revised 2007

NSW

100

30

100

40

73

25

5

184

557

Vic

52

35

65

7

64

13

15

147

398

Qld

40

10

32

9

65

21

3

44

224

SA

10

5

16

2

15

5

1

19

73

WA

21

3

18

4

46

3

5

28

128

Tas

2

-

7

-

7

3

2

4

25

NT

3

2

1

4

18

2

1

6

37

ACT

1

4

1

3

-

-

3

2

10

Aust

228

87

244

64

288

71

34

436

1 452

- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)

(a) 2007 data are revised and subject to a further revisions process. See Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions for further information

(b) For 2007 preliminary data, some data have moved between originally published mechanism categories due to a more specific code allocation in the processing of 2008 data.

(c) Data cells with small values have been randomly assigned to protect the confidentiality of individuals. As a result, some totals will not equal to the sum of their components. Cells with a zero value have not been affected by confidentialisation.

(a) 2007 data are revised and subject to a further revisions process. See Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions for further information.

(b) For 2007 preliminary data, some data have moved between originally published intent categories due to a more specific code allocation in the processing of 2008 data.

(c) Data cells with small values have been randomly assigned to protect the confidentiality of individuals. As a result, some totals will not equal to the sum of their components. Cells with a zero value have not been affected by confidentialisation.

(d) Care needs to be taken in interpreting figures relating to Suicide due to limitations of data, see Explanatory Notes 72-75.

OPEN AND CLOSED CASES

14 Table 6 shows the number of 2007 open and closed coroner certified records on the ABS processing system before and after the application of the 2007 revisions process. The number of open coronial cases reduced from 5,128 to 3,017 over the 12 month period. This means a total of 1,614 cases moved from open to closed between January 2009 and January 2010. This is larger than the overall number of cases which were revised through the ABS revision process (1,172), due to the underlying cause of death not being changed by coroners for some open cases which moved to a status of closed.

15 The number of closed cases for the New South Wales jurisdiction has decreased. This is due to a difference in the methodology used for generating these figures. For 2007 preliminary data, the numbers were obtained from NCIS directly as the ABS did not record case status on the Mortality system at that stage. The figures for 2007 revised data were derived from ABS Mortality system. Although these numbers should match, the difference can be explained by:

the wrong coroner case originally being attributed to a record

not being able to match to NCIS due to errors in spelling of names or date of birth or death

incorrect calculation of closed vs open cases in 2007 preliminary due to different methodology.

(a) 2007 data are revised and subject to a further revisions process. See Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions for further information

(b) Data cells with small values have been randomly assigned to protect the confidentiality of individuals. As a result, some totals will not equal to the sum of their components. Cells with a zero value have not been affected by confidentialisation.

(c) 'Other' includes cases with status of 'blank', 'not stated' and 'not applicable'

16 Table 7 shows the remaining number of open coroner certified cases for 2007 by type of cause, after the application of the revision process. These remaining 3,017 open cases will be subject to a second round of COD revisions as part of the 2009 causes of death processing.

Table 7: Remaining open cases, Type of cause - State and territory of registration: 2007 Revised(a)(b)

Natural Causes(c)

External Causes(d)

Unknown Causes(e)

Total

NSW

694

557

159

1 410

VIC

264

398

4

666

QLD

189

224

89

502

SA

57

73

29

159

WA

39

128

16

183

TAS

5

25

-

30

NT

7

37

3

47

ACT

8

10

2

20

Australia

1 263

1 452

302

3 017

- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)

(a) 2007 data are revised and subject to a further revisions process. See Technical Note 3: 2007 Revisions for further information

(b) Data cells with small values have been randomly assigned to protect the confidentiality of individuals. As a result, some totals will not equal to the sum of their components. Cells with a zero value have not been affected by confidentialisation.